I am the grit in the gears, the missing bolt, I am the poker of sticks into spokes.
I like to know how things work, but sometimes when I take them apart and rebuild them, I have a few pieces left over.
I am a man, so I tend to leave reading the instructions until after it goes wrong.
And like all men I have a comprehensive mental map of the world and never need to ask directions.
I never get lost, only sometimes I'm late, or end up in the wrong place entirely.
It's what we do.

Wednesday, 4 July 2007

Soubriquet Labs is happy to announce that the new lightweight horses are now available.We recommend the carrying of sandbags and water-ballast during all long distance rides. Customers are warned against riding over water without wearing suitable flotation aids, as any outbursts of equine flatulence can result in a sudden loss of altitude.

No, it's The Corn Exchange in Leeds, (Yorkshire, England). In the 1970s the interior was a big open space, with the desks of the corn merchants in rows. Time moves on. Corn selling is by different means now, and this lovely building is now full of shops.It was built in 1862, and was seen then as a stunning piece of modern architecture. The same architect, Cuthbert Broderick, designed the Leeds Town Hall, an altogether more conventional building. In the Corn Exchange, though, he excelled, using an altogether new technology to create the broad pillarless span of the roof. This was a period where Victorian engineers were creating wide arched railway stations, and also circular domes, but this, an elliptical dome, to me this is a masterwork, before its time. And if Broderick had lived to see the great airships, I think he'd have been well placed to become an aviation designer.

I do have reservations about posting this. Truth is, those police officers were probably on their way to some thing that desperately needed their presence.But then. What muppetry from the driver. It's a Renault van, not a big truck, or Land Rover. It's a diesel engined vehicle, so although it has no water-fearing HT leads, Renault, in the past, have been a bit notorious for low engine air intakes.The driver should, of course, be trained to cope. And the first rule of flood driving is to know the water depth. He did not wait long enough to properly gauge that. And he should have proceeded at a gentler pace.If you get the speed right, you minimise the splashing, and form a bow-wave, which sails along in front of you, leaving a lower trough under the front of the vehicle.This driver, in all probability wrecked the engine. When a diesel engine ingests a lump of water, the results are not pretty. Very strong things bend or break. The engine does not run again.At half the speed, they would have driven out the other side. Reason for the stop was incompetent driving, no other.Any emergency vehicle driver should know the adage, "It's better to get there a little bit late, than not get there at all."

Me? A smartypants? Hmm. Well yes. I do drive through deep water, on a fairly regular basis... rather deeper than that. And I've yet to stuff an engine.

The floods were recent. Judging by the voices, I'd place the incident in South Yorkshire, or maybe just over the border in Derbyshire.

Update...My estimate, based on the video and examination of a similar van is that the water was between seven and nine inches deep.I note 11 hits on this site from a Police-Net ISP, resolving to Sheffield.... Comments, guys?

Sometimes in my life, I've been a prolific writer. People told me I should write.I do, constantly, in my head, as I go about my daily life.But give me a keyboard, and I am often struck dumb. Not for me the discipline of a thousand words before lunchtime, every day. J.K.Rowling, you have nothing to fear from me.I quite like the idea of inhabiting a lighthouse on an island, or some remote headland.The Lighthouse at Cape Wrath, the northerlymost point of the Scottish Mainland rather appealed to me. What a beautiful place.I'm not afraid of solitude, I don't need shopping malls and cinemas, and to be honest.... It might be a good idea to leave behind the broadband connection.The computer is a great tool for eating up time, and allied to the World Wide Web, oh dear.... I get lost in there. I can wander for hours... Days even.But Write? this blog was at first, a bit of an experiment, I wondered if it might stimulate me to creativity. So far, that has not often happened, instead, I use it, I think, as a scrapbook, where I place things which I like, things which amuse me, leave them here for you.You.The mystery reader.Some of the regular visitors I know, in a way, I read their blogs, wonder at their creativity, enjoy their stories.Others come by strange routes.Search engines mostly. Some referrals from other blogs. And that intrigues me too.Who is the person from Ulan Bator, Outer Mongolia, who keeps visiting? I wonder if it was because I posted music by Yat Kha, from Tuva?Or some other link I don't know?Recently.Well, for quite a while, I've not posted anything much, or not anything really requiring much of me. And I'm really busy, and a bad organiser, so I might as well post a few things tonight, in the spirit of..... of.... of?See, I really still don't have any idea what all this is about. Feel free to enlighten me if you know.

A keen blogspot poet and fashionista started something she called 'Fantasy Shoe Day'I started noticing bizarrities of shoe imagery on my wanderings within the web, and either posted links to her or set them up here.She, however, for personal reasons stopped blogging, which was a loss to the rest of us, leaving me with a backlog of silly shoe pics....

And of course, I lose track of where I found them, the whys and wherefores.Here are a few.There might be more, sometime.